HerInt: Cultural heritage participation patterns among immigrants and their influence on integration. The case of Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Norway.

How do immigrants engage with ancestral and new homeland heritage and what factors stand behind their heritage participation patterns? Can cultural heritage participation facilitate the process of immigrants´ integration, and if so, how?

These are the central research questions addressed in this project, which has an ambition to contribute to Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Societies cluster of the Horizon Europe´s second pillar.

Public institutions in European countries promote the heritage of immigrant minorities in various ways, as well as encourage the participation of immigrants in heritages of new homelands with a goal to enhance integration.

While there has been quite extended scholarly attention to the institutional forms of minority heritage inclusion into the mainstream, the knowledge on the individual attitudes of immigrants regarding the participation in cultural heritage and its possible influence on immigrants´ integration to the new homeland is still limited.

This presents a gap between theory and practice and herein lies the potential of HerInt action.

The planned research aims at identifying the patterns of participation in cultural heritage by immigrants from Poland in Norway and from Ukraine in Poland and evaluating its influence on immigrants´ inclusion in the new homelands.

HerInt therefore aims at bridging the gap between migration and heritage studies by addressing the relevance of cultural heritage participation patterns to the issues of integration of immigrants and initiates an interdisciplinary and cross-sectorial dialog between migration and heritage scholars and cultural heritage stakeholders.

This aim is supported by supervisors with an expertise in both migration and heritage studies and the stay at their institutions: Professor Agata Górny, Centre for Migration Research at the University of Warsaw and Professor Jacek Purchla International Cultural Centre.